reverence or reluctance? And how can we be faid to ferve him, when our time, and talents are spent in worldly cares, or in the gratification of our lufts, or hid in the napkin of floth.

Again it is written, "Thou shalt "love the Lord thy God with all

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thy heart, with all thy foul, and "with all thy ftrength;" i. e. with all thy powers of foul and body.-And what doth this imply but the exertion of all our faculties to please him, who is the object of our love? How can this love be manifefted, but by a conftant perfeverance in good works, so agreeable to his will and enjoined by his commandments? And how can these be performed,

and

and our love be approved by him, if we continue in idleness.

5th. Take a fhort view, now, of the inevitable confequences of idleness in religion, and you will foon fee the fatal effects of it upon your particular and general good.

Take

away religion from the foul of man, and he is immediately reduced to a level with the beafts that perish. His appetite is confined to carnal gratifications; his defires are fordid and selfish; his will is flubborn and inflexibly obftinate and incorrigible; his understanding is clouded; his memory is impaired; his taste is changed from rational and heavenly, to earthly, fenfual, devilish he is eftranged to God and goodness, and, fin and wickednefs are his delight:

his

his confcience is either feared and hardened by repeated acts of wickedness, or the teftimony of it is either ftifled or over-ruled by the impetuofity of his passions: his reason, what few glimpses of it remain, is a trouble, his very life a burthen to him

heaven and hell are never in his thoughts; and his only wifh is to drop into and rot in the grave.

What a difgrace to human reafon! How is the pearl of great price vilely thrown away! His own powers are loft for want of using them! The benevolent offers of his fellow creatures are rejected! The infinite goodnefs of his God never feen or totally difregarded! No eye lifted up to heaven! No hand ftretched out for mercy No petition for pardon drops from

from his tongue! Where then is hope? It were a mifapplication of mercy, to give it where it is not asked. Infinite goodness itfelf cannot extend fo far as to fave us, if we use not the means appointed for our falvation; and idleness hinders us from using them.

When a man is thus rendered incapable of working out his own, how can he be thought able to contribute any thing towards the common falvation? Whom doth he advife, correct, exhort, or rebuke? And what are the glorious effects of his pious: example? He is a deferter to the common caufe. He leaves his share of the burthen to be borne by others, and hinders the work of the vineyard from going forward, by standing in their

>

their way or corrupting others into the fame idlenefs and as he hath

no hopes of receiving any wages

himself, fo he is utterly careless of the intereft of the induftrious labourers.

you

In the conclufion; though I have after our bleffed faviour's example, in fome parts of this difcourfe reprefented religion as a burthen; yet, if attended to the whole of it, you muft allow it is not fo intolerable as some mens fancies have painted it : but that it is agreeable to your nature, that ye have fufficient powers of body and foul, befides fupernatural affistances to enable you to bear it.

Solomon faid of religion, "her ways are ways of pleasantnefs, and